Forum OpenACS Q&A: Check-out Netvibes

you must check out netvibes [1]. This is really great. They have developed a Javascript and cookie based portal that can be customized via dragg & drop. I love it. It even works under IE, Netscape and Opera. Maybe the apple guys among you can check it out for apple.

This week Solution Grove working on a portal like interface using XOWiki. It has drag and drop moving of portals. It uses AJAX and also hides portals, and lets you change the calendar month view without reloading.

Our spec does not include remembering preferences at this time so we don't have that piece.

The package used is the Ajax Helper package and it's currently on OpenACS head. It's nothing fancy really, it just generates the javascript that you can embed into your templates or include in your tcl code.

The javascripts are from the Prototype and Scriptaculous javscript libraries. They allow you to do cinematic effects and make ajax calls. You'll see some of the effects on the demo.

The ajax part of the demo is that (at least of admins right now) when the portals are rearranged an xmlhttp call is made to a url that receives the new sorting order and updates the database accordingly so that positions of the portlets will persist.

This will probably need a lot of work for it to be at par with Netvibes or Google home pages (http://www.google.com/ig) but I consider this a proof of concept that an incredible toolkit like OpenACS with a robust backend can also have an incredible front end user interface that can ellicit "wows" and "ooohs" from it's users.